The 10th Anniversary of Power Rangers 10th Anniversary – Forever Red

On May 24th, 2002, famed Power Rangers scribe Amit Bhaumik finished his final draft of an episode of Power Rangers Wild Force that was meant to serve as a celebration/anniversary episode for 10 years of Power Rangers. Those of you who follow and are fans of Power Rangers will know that episode forever as Forever Red, probably the greatest "fanboy" moment in all of Power Rangers nearly 20 year history.

The story was total fan-service - remnants of the evil Machine Empire (Power Rangers Zeo) had regrouped on the surface of the moon to dig up Lord Zedd's personal zord, Serpentera (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). In a mission deemed top secret, veteran Power Ranger and team leader Tommy Oliver (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, Power Rangers Zeo, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Dino Thunder) gathered together all the Red Rangers of the past (minus Rocky) to team up and destroy the remnants of the Machine Empire as well as Serpentera.

To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Power Rangers 10th Anniversary, Amit Bhaumik has updated his personal blog with some details regarding the early days of drafting Forever Red, including new photos and scans of some of the original drafts/ideas/etc.

Click here to check out the Forever Red blog!

Share your favorite memories of Forever Red in our discussion thread attached via this story. Is Forever Red the best Power Rangers team up? Or was Once a Ranger a better team-up? Maybe you just prefer the team-ups mid season between two teams like "Reinforcements from the Future". Join in the discussion!

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the 10th anniversary episode? [Insert lame Inception joke here]

But seriously that's pretty cool. One of my favourite things about Forever Red strangely enough was that Carter Grayson was the first veteran ranger to show up & he said the exact same thing that he said in the LR/TF team-up. "I'm Carter Grayson, Lightspeed Rescue, Red Ranger", If Carter shows up in next years show he should totally say that exact same line.

Forever Red is much better than Once A Ranger!
I loved seeing the Astro Megaship again, all the red rangers (Especially my favorites, Andros, Jason, and Eric) was awesome.
I loved the entire episode, sans the ending (Which I got clarification from Linkara's HoPR as to what was up with it).

There's a lot of rumor and speculation as to why Forever Red ended up the way it did.

Some of the more classic ones (again, RUMORS):

- Disney didn't want to do an Anniversary Episode, didn't see the need of the importance
- Forever Red and what they wanted to do wasn't in the budget
- Bandai agreed to fork over money to help finish the episode as long as it featured the "Wild Rider" (a toy Bandai really wanted to push) in a prominent way
- Was originally planned as a 2-parter but Disney only agreed to one episode

The only reason I put stock in to some of those rumors is because Doug Sloan has stated before that Disney was done with Power Rangers when Wild Force ended - they even titled the last two episodes "The End of the Power Rangers". It wasn't until Doug Sloan and Co. were able to talk Disney into agreeing to shoot in NZ where there wasn't unions and it was incredibly cheaper and closer to Japan (where everything was going to be shipped from anyways). The contract portion is sticky and I don't believe anyone has ever found concrete evidence on the contracts Disney signed with the production crew in NZ, but the rumor is that Disney agreed to a 2 year contract, and after ratings were strong with Dino Thunder, brought in their own EP (Bruce Kalish) and signed another 5 year contract. After "Jungle Fury" (4th year contract) ended, Disney tried to pull out of the deal but it was thanks to Bandai (rumor) that forced them to committ to RPM, where the EP Eddie has stated that he was told, "You can pretty much do whatever you want to do, you're being cancelled at the end of production no matter how good/bad the ratings are", hence his drastic change from source material (Go Onger) and the more serious and adult themed storyline.

In short? Disney was tight with the purse strings and really didn't want to do any of the stuff that ended up cool (Forever Red and RPM being the biggest two).

Please don't misunderstand this as a flame. I loved this episode for what it was, a thank you for the last ten years, and a chance to bring back all the old Reds for one last Hurrah. But... Come on. The villians were used Beetleborg costumes, an he defeated frickkin Serpentara with his sword! Alone! A good idea that failed with poor follow-through/budget constraints.

The Beetleborg costumes didn't bother me at all. They were mechanical in design and I'm willing to let suspension of disbelief take hold.
Serpentera's defeat did leave a bad taste in my mouth and I would have much prefer the zord brawl that was (Apparently) originally intended.

I suddenly want Akudos Gil to be a reincarnated Dark Specter. While I liked what we got for episode (except the lame way of destroying Serpentara), I wish we could have BOTH in the PR canon. Then I thought about the prospect of the 20th being Gokaiger. Akudos Gil comes into the show late enough that the idea of him being a reincarnated Dark Specter would actually fix one of very few faults in Gokaiger, that being Akudos was just a punching bag and nothing else.

Regardless, I enjoyed this info a lot.

PS Still want AkaRed as Zordon. Maybe have the two fight in the finale even?

Outside of the lackluster Red Wildforce ranger somehow being able to beat Serpenterra by himself with a motorcycle, this episode was quite good.

And: I never understood why exactly Quantum Ranger was in this. His costume was red, alright. But he wasn't a red ranger. He was, if anything, a sixth ranger. But that could just be because I never liked any part of him. Not his zord, not his battlizer (He used rollerblades for crying out loud..), and not the actor who played him. Time Force would've been better, I think, without him. And Forever Red would've been to.

I can remember my 1st time seeing this episode after I started watching Gokaiger. I hadn't seen much of any of the previous PR shows with the exception of MMPR season 1-3 so i didn't know any of the new rangers. With that said I remember instantly taking a liking to Carter Grayson. He just came off as a leader and as someone to respect. Not knowing the other rangers except for Tommy, Jason and I had seen TJ in PR: Turbo I didn't really have the investment in the other red rangers. This was my 1st impression of them.

I thought it was a cool episode. I thought it felt a bit rushed and that an occasion like this episode deserved more than 1 episode. It left me wanting to see more of this type of meeting of the rangers. Again especially since i was in the middle of watching Gokaiger.

I watched it on the Best ofPower Rangers DVD and all those episodes are multiple part episodes edited down to one episode and i thought may be this episode was that way too. After WildForce came out on Netflix i found out it wasn't. Still all in all I enjoyed it for what it was.